Full Moon in Virgo, Pisces Solar Festival 2016

Welcome to the February 22, 2016 Full Moon in Virgo, Pisces Solar Festival edition of the Satya Center Cosmic Weather Forecast newsletter.

Warm greetings from your co-Editors, Curtis Lang and Jane Sherry.

It’s balmy here in Boca Raton, with mid-February temperatures in the 70s during the day and 50s at night, with a nice breeze off the ocean we can feel 6 miles inland.

We are feeling the watery element all around us, in our backyard swimming pool and in the parade of giant-size puffy clouds in psychedelic early evening pinks, blues and yellows, promising rain. During what is normally the dry season here, we have seen tons of rain.

Welcome to the Pisces Solar Festival weekend, a celebration of the water element in human nature.

Jane and I have been planting some prehistoric looking large split leaf philodendrons, elephant ears, and a handful of palm trees the last couple weeks, now that we’ve gotten two truckloads of organic compost and mulch spread out in key areas of the plantings on our tiny property, and we are getting ready to do soil tests so we can begin to create an herb and vegetable garden by the swimming pool.

We have just joined a CSA, Scooby’s Organic Farm, located in Davie, Florida, 35 minutes southwest of Boca Raton, hard by the Everglades.

It’s almost like being in the Southern Hemisphere. (Laugh Out Loud) Well we are just a few miles from the Bahamas and Cuba.

And we are just an hour north of Miami. Extreme South Florida, where we live, and Miami, are classified as having a tropical monsoon climate, with hot, humid summers, and short, warm winters, usually a dry season. This is why flocks of snowbirds from New York and Canada fly in to overwinter every year, clogging the roadways with their Bentleys, Mercedes Benzes, Audis, BMWs and Maseratis. So far a ‘green’ mentality here either means getting and spending more money or saving more money.

Jane’s brother is fond of telling us that “we’re in the freaking Bermuda Triangle” which is why he won’t go out on a boat.

So Jane and I Googed the location of the Bermuda Triangle. Like most other things related to that mysterious region of water, the location of the Bermuda Triangle is loosely defined, mythical in nature, and in hot dispute.

However one apex of the Triangle is normally associated with the city of Miami, with the others in San Juan, Puerto Rico and Bermuda. So we are right about there, I guess.

It’s really different from New York and the San Francisco Bay area, and it will take us a while to get used to the newness of everything here in Boca.

We are feeling the seasons, connecting with the Earth, monitoring the passages of stars and moon, and we are having delicious beach moments that provide all the benefits of expensive spa treatments, intense spiritual practices, and an invigorating light stretching, flexing workout. Plus we are understanding the power of the water element in ways we have never understood before.

I have been working with Reiki and my favorite crystals to connect with the devas, elementals and nature spirits in the Palm Beach county area and the offshore environs of the Atlantic Ocean. When Jane and I are at the beach, we feel this connection strongly.

And we are feeling the elementals respond to us.

Our last trip to the beach this week, at low tide, I walked to the water, and looked down at my feet. There was a perfect sand dollar or burrowing sea urchin, of the genus Mellita quinquiesperforata. Jane found a variety of small shell beauties and has begun to construct the new Goddess Altar in our kitchen – we’ll share it with you next time!

Later, my brother-in-law, who has lived in Florida for many years and has an amazing shell collection, told me that the large sand dollars like the one I was gifted with by the sea are very rare, very fragile. So much so that when he found one broken up on the beach, he glued it back together, knowing he might not easily find another that size.

I am feeling that a conversation with the nature spirits of South Florida has now finally begun for us.

We are accepting the power of the water element into our lives. We are beginning to loosen up, and we are feeling drawn to just go with the flow.

So although our minds are appalled at what we see going on around us in chemical warfare against our Mother Planet, global political circles and financial markets, and although we are anxious about wars and rumors of wars, we are beginning to experience the fact that proper use of the water element can flush out toxic emotions, and prevent them from building up and blocking the free expression of our energies in every area of life.

We are becoming more receptive, and we are making every effort to connect with nature, and now that we are mainly moved in, our next step is to take steps to connect with the community here in South Florida.

So far, we are finding much to love in South Florida, despite the fact that our minds are shocked that after searching for a year and a half for a new home in California, Florida and New York, we landed in uber-suburbia in the tropics, minutes from many large beaches.

And we look forward to discovering what our Guides have in mind for us in this new world we are entering.

Cosmic Weather Forecast

This Monday, at 1:25 pm Eastern time, the Full Moon occurs at 3° Virgo, and the Sun opposes it at 3° Pisces.

The Sabian symbol for the Sun at 3° Pisces is “petrified tree trunks lie broken on desert sand”.

This symbolic picture of this week’s Solar Festival presents a sublime dreamscape that evokes the passage of Aeons in a simple pictogram.

The image evokes awe in the face of the unimaginable timeframes constituting geological history, and perhaps a little fear when one compares those world-altering cycles of time with the span of a human life, or even with the sum total of humanity’s tenure on this planet.

This is a normal human reaction to the awareness of the transitory nature of all life and phenomena in the known physical Universe.

As we ponder our own role as a species in the alteration of the climate worldwide, we are confronted this Pisces Solar Festival with an image of climate change writ large.

Imagine giant Sequoias growing in a rain forest over a period of centuries, then reduced to calcified remnants scattered across lifeless, arid desert sands in a landscape rendered unsuitable for plant life by large-scale climate change on a vast scale.

In the 21st century human beings are confronted with the fact that only courage, conscious awareness and the self-directed evolution of our species can help us avoid the fate of the petrified tree trunks in this symbol.

The fossilized fragments of giant trees in a desert also signify that although living beings are transitory phenomena, inter-dependent with a nurturing environment for their impermanent existence, all living beings have an impact on the greater whole which is much more long-lasting than their limited lifespan.

All human spirituality and all human culture is a testament to this fact.

Spiritual traditions acknowledge that each and every human being leaves traces of subtle energy in the greater Universe as they live their lives and die their deaths. One repository for these tracings is known as the Akashic Records.

Each of us is impermanent as a flower and utterly dependent upon a favorable planetary climate balance and the unending support of human culture to sustain us in our lives. Each of us has the potential to add to the sum of human knowledge, to fashion a new tool that will be used far into the future, to create a song, a tune, a piece of art that is treasured long beyond our limited lifespan. Each of us can learn to vibrate with such strong energies of love and light that through the law of resonance and attraction, our radiant energy elevates the energy of all those around us, now and far into the future.

That is what great engineers, scientists, artists, musicians, and spiritual masters have accomplished for aeons of time.

It is up to us this Pisces Solar Festival to face the facts. Our lives are fleeting, our civilization impermanent, and our species’ survival contingent upon living in harmony with the eco-system and with one another.

In the face of these facts many of us are feeling a strong desire to contribute something substantial to our brothers and sisters this Solar Festival.

What do we want to achieve in our lives? Are our achievements designed to enhance our wealth, status and power at any cost? Are the ways we pursue our goals going to contribute to the environmental degradation that is rendering our planet more and more hostile to our global civilization?

Our great work is nothing less than to imagine a new set of technologies and tools appropriate to the Anthropocene Age in which mankind takes responsibility for the stewardship of planet Earth.

Our hearts cry out for new art, new music, and a new culture that will nourish humanity’s better instincts, offering hope and support during a Dark Age which prizes cultural products solely according to their monetary value.

Our karmic task is to observe the epochal transformations occurring around us and to respond by radiating love and holding fast to our own inner wisdom, the result of direct experience of spiritual worlds, no matter how little support we receive from the status quo culture.

So we must learn to balance a strong sense of Self with openness to the needs of our brothers and sisters, and indeed an increasing awareness of the needs of all living beings on planet Earth. For we can only prosper in a healthy eco-system inhabited by healthy plants, insects, fish, birds, and animals, sustained by clean water, clean air and healthy soils.

Sun conjunct Neptune in Pisces this week renders our normally solid sense of self (Sun) a little bit foggy, as boundaries seem to dissolve around us and we sense unexplainable connections between ourselves and everyone and everything around us.

This enables us to see more deeply into the true nature of being, since our sense of a separate self is surely an illusion.

This Pisces Solar Festival will encourage us to feel the true nature of our being more deeply and fully, as we sense the interconnections between our own being and the life around us, of which we are but a small yet invaluable component.

This Solar Festival will help us to comprehend emotionally how dependent we are on the precisely tuned, finely balanced, self-equilibrating system of elements and living beings that Planet Earth has nurtured over uncountable millions of years, and which sustains us and all human beings.

The Sabian Symbol for the Moon at 3° Virgo is “2 guardian angels”.

Moon in Virgo opposing Neptune in Pisces signifies a thinning of the veils that separate us from the emotion-laden, dreamy and potentially illusory astral realms, while promising the diligent spiritual aspirant increased access to the even more remote and lofty causal realms of mental archetypes inhabited by the angelic hierarchies.

The Moon in Virgo is conjunct Jupiter and the North Node, which provides a much-needed grounding energy for this somewhat dreamy and spacey Full Moon Festival. Virgo is a sign of detail-oriented practicality and of extremely fine-tuned discrimination based upon systematic intellectual analysis.

The North Node is the place where Higher Purpose is revealed.

Jupiter is the Sat Guru of all planets in our Solar System, and impels us to great attainment as well as bestowing great good fortune.

The conjunction of Moon, Jupiter and North Node in Virgo during this Full Moon Festival indicates that each of us can utilize the ambient cosmic energies of this highly charged moment to crystallize a long-range vision of our futures that will truly exemplify the best and highest good of all life forms on Planet Earth.

The combination of Sun conjunct Neptune in Pisces with Moon, Jupiter and North Node in Virgo indicates a favorable atmosphere for all spiritual practices, for dreaming, for art, for focused relaxation, creative visualization, and enjoyment of all that soothes body, mind, heart and soul.

This Full Moon we are given a pass key to the Higher Realms of consciousness where those who see past the surface appearances of physical reality live their lives of service, in Unity with all that exists.

There are guardian angels, Spirit Guides and Ascended Master teachers inhabiting these higher realms, and our intent will activate the pass key we are given to their realms this Full Moon.

Let us humbly ask for grace and guidance from these Great Beings of Light this Full Moon, to help us resolve the painful contradictions, shortcomings and failures that have confronted us as individuals and as a species at this moment in our evolutionary journey.

Let us make it our intent to open ourselves this Full Moon in dreamtime, and in waking consciousness, in meditation, and in visionary heat to the inspiration, the clarity and the penetrating discernment that will reveal a new path, a new way of being, and a new life to us. Because that new life awaits.

Let us remain open to meaningful coincidences, synchronicities and joyful serendipitous surprises this Full Moon Festival week, for these are the Cosmos’ way of talking to us in response to our prayers.

Cosmic Weather Forecast Global News Update

As we ponder the meaning of this Full Moon’s starscape, as outlined above, it’s useful to consider the vast gulf between the collective thought-forms revealed in the mass media during the last month or so, and the transformation of consciousness that is required if our global civilization is to continue to support increasing billions of human beings at the current level of technology and advanced culture.

Last December, we were all excited by the Paris climate agreement in which 200 countries agreed to take action to mitigate runaway climate change.

“The Paris agreement, which will come into effect in 2020, will require all countries, rather than just the wealthy ones, to tackle climate change,” according to a December 13, 2015 article in The Sydney Morning Herald. “The deal says the world will aim to stabilise global warming well below two degrees above pre-industrial levels, and less if possible.”

“Rousing applause and tears of joy filled the conference centre as the deal was passed in the conference centre on the northern outskirts of Paris,” the article continues.

For the first time the global community agreed that all countries would take steps to reduce carbon emissions to mitigate global climate change. The agreement is a non-binding promise by all parties to take steps that collectively could halt the pace of runaway climate change by limiting global warming to a level 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.

In the past, the poor countries of the world had successfully argued that the rich countries who had benefited the most from using cheap fossil fuels and who had been responsible for creating the climate change problem in the first place should be responsible for reducing carbon emissions.

What has caused this sea-change in global politics?

For one thing, China has declared war on pollution, because decades of hyper-growth and over-reliance on cheap coal have rendered Beijing and many other Chinese cities virtually uninhabitable, shrouded in a thick veil of smog reminiscent of Victorian London.

Secondly, “. . .climate change is no longer a hypothetical problem – it's happening in real time all around us. Droughts, floods, more destructive storms, weird weather of all sorts – just look out your window,” according to a 2014 article by Jeff Goodell in Rolling Stone. “In the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's top scientists called the fact that the Earth is warming ‘unequivocal’ and stated that humans are the cause of it. Without dramatic action, the planet could warm up as much as 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 F) by the end of the century, which would be catastrophic.”

Third, “until now, the biggest obstacle to an international agreement to reduce carbon pollution has been the United States. But that's starting to change,” Goodell explains. “Thanks to Obama's recent crackdown on pollution, as well as the boom in cheap natural gas, which has displaced dirty coal, carbon emissions in the U.S. are on the decline. ‘What the president has done is very important,’ says Robert Stavins, director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements. ‘It allows the U.S. to look at other countries and say -- Hey, what are you doing?’"

The ink is barely dry on the 200 nation December 2015 Paris Climate Accord, and already it looks like Obama’s crackdown on dirty coal technologies could be thwarted by a hostile Republican dominated Supreme Court or stymied by a hostile Republican dominated Congress.

“The Supreme Court’s surprise decision Tuesday to halt the carrying out of President Obama’s climate change regulation could weaken or even imperil the international global warming accord reached with great ceremony in Paris less than two months ago. . .” Coral Davenport reports in the The New York Times, on February 10, 2016.

“The Paris Agreement, the first accord to commit every country to combat climate change, had as a cornerstone Mr. Obama’s assurance that the United States would enact strong, legally sound policies to significantly cut carbon emissions,” explains the Times article.

“The United States is the largest historical greenhouse gas polluter, although its annual emissions have been overtaken by China’s. But in the capitals of India and China, the other two largest polluters, climate change policy experts said the court’s decision threw the United States’ commitment into question, and possibly New Delhi’s and Beijing’s. ‘If the U.S. Supreme Court actually declares the coal power plant rules stillborn, the chances of nurturing trust between countries would all but vanish,’ said Navroz K. Dubash, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. ‘This could be the proverbial string which causes Paris to unravel.’”

The Supreme Court ruled that President Obama’s climate change regulations should be put on hold until lawsuits filed by state governments challenging the rules can be heard by lower courts. This process could take years, effectively neutering the new environmental regulations for a period far longer than the remnant of President Obama’s term of office.

With the sudden death this month of Arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the success of the Paris Climate Accord depends at this point on Obama’s ability to successfully appoint a new, more liberal Supreme Court justice. Then the new Court would have to re-litigate the climate change regulations, and potentially remove the legal obstacles to fulfilling America’s Paris pledges.

However the Republican Congress intends to block any and all nominees.

Here in America, we are engaged in a wasteful multi-billion dollar public relations war called the Presidential election.

This has raised the stakes in the Presidential election since potentially the new President will decide who controls the Court, currently split 4-4 between conservatives and liberals.

Among Republican Presidential candidates, it is an article of faith that climate change is a “hoax”, and therefore nothing need be done to alter the status quo of dependence upon fossil fuels.

“NBC News just called it ‘The Great Freeze’ — coldest weather in years. Is our country still spending money on the GLOBAL WARMING HOAX?” — Donald Trump via Twitter in 2014.

Ted Cruz says he will withdraw the US from the Paris treaty if elected President. “Barack Obama seems to think the SUV parked in your driveway is a bigger threat to national security than radical Islamic terrorists who want to kill us. That’s just nutty,” Cruz said. “These are ideologues, they don’t focus on the facts, they won’t address the facts, and what they’re interested [in] instead is more and more government power.”

Marco Rubio said the Paris Climate Accord is “ridiculous”, an “unfunny joke”. “This kind of unilateral disarmament in our economy is reckless, and it is hurting the American Dream,” Rubio told a Fox News audience in Las Vegas.

Jeb Bush said he would probably not want to attend climate change conferences at all. "I worry about the economic impact for our country,” Bush said. "I worry that, put aside intentions, these proposals could have an impact on the here and now that people are really struggling right now so, I would be uncertain on whether I would attend a meeting like that would seem like the movement is towards policies that would hurt our economy.”

The two Democratic candidates for President support the Paris Climate Change accord, with one important difference.

Hillary Clinton believes the accord is a historical event, and indicates that we are taking the steps necessary to mitigate runaway climate change, while Bernie Sanders feels the non-binding Paris accord is insufficient to halt the most severe effects of climate change.

"’I applaud President Obama, Secretary Kerry and our negotiating team for helping deliver a new, ambitious international climate agreement in Paris,’" said Clinton, quoted in a CNN news story dated December 14, 2015.

“She adds that the next decade is ‘critical’ for implementing the agreement and tackling climate change.”

"’We cannot afford to be slowed by the climate skeptics or deterred by the defeatists who doubt America's ability to meet this challenge,’" she said.

Sanders, however, said that while the agreement was a step forward, it not enough to tackle climate change, the CNN article continues.

"’The planet is in crisis. We need bold action in the very near future and this does not provide that,’ he said in a statement.”

"’In the United States, we have a Republican Party which is much more interested in contributions from the fossil fuel industry than they care about the future of the planet. That is true all over the globe," Sanders added. ‘We've got to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and fight for national and international legislation that transforms our energy system away from fossil fuel as quickly as possible.’"

Quite a contrast between the two parties, with only one candidate among them all demanding a more aggressive, focused approach to mitigating runaway climate change. And that candidate considered an outlier, the least electable candidate of all in a general election.

So there is quite a disconnect between what Spirit tells us this Full Moon, what the Cosmic Starscape reveals, and what the consensus reality of our political leadership seems to be.

Tens of millions of American voters know intuitively that a continuation of the status quo will be disastrous, and they are looking for candidates who represent some form of radical change.

Global News From Around the Web

I’ve been posting important news articles with short commentary on my personal Facebook page for the last couple of months, and for those of you who didn’t yet see that, or perhaps don’t use Facebook at all, here is a recap, from just the last few days. There are too many posts to reproduce them all here.

My comments are in italics. Other paragraphs are quotes from cited sources.

2/3 of Americans believe the country is in decline. Eighty-one percent believe the power of ordinary people to control our country is getting weaker every day as politicians of both parties fight to protect their own power and privilege. Americans overwhelmingly agree (78%-15%) that both political parties are too beholden to special interests to create any meaningful change. 74% see the biased and slanted coverage of the media as part of the problem. 56% say they wish there were a third party with a chance of success to fight for their interests.

Officials with Syrian rebel battalions that receive covert backing from one arm of the U.S. government told BuzzFeed News that they recently began fighting rival rebels supported by another arm of the U.S. government.

The infighting between American proxies is the latest setback for the Obama administration’s Syria policy and lays bare its contradictions as violence in the country gets worse.

The confusion is playing out on the battlefield — with the U.S. effectively engaged in a proxy war with itself. “It’s very strange, and I cannot understand it,” said Ahmed Othman, the commander of the U.S.-backed rebel battalion Furqa al-Sultan Murad, who said he had come under attack from U.S.-backed Kurdish militants in Aleppo this week.

COVERAGE OF the Syrian war will be remembered as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of the American press. Reporting about carnage in the ancient city of Aleppo is the latest reason why.

For three years, violent militants have run Aleppo. Their rule began with a wave of repression. They posted notices warning residents: “Don’t send your children to school. If you do, we will get the backpack and you will get the coffin.” Then they destroyed factories, hoping that unemployed workers would have no recourse other than to become fighters. They trucked looted machinery to Turkey and sold it.

This month, people in Aleppo have finally seen glimmers of hope. The Syrian army and its allies have been pushing militants out of the city. Last week they reclaimed the main power plant. Regular electricity may soon be restored. The militants’ hold on the city could be ending.

Militants, true to form, are wreaking havoc as they are pushed out of the city by Russian and Syrian Army forces. “Turkish-Saudi backed ‘moderate rebels’ showered the residential neighborhoods of Aleppo with unguided rockets and gas jars,” one Aleppo resident wrote on social media. The Beirut-based analyst Marwa Osma asked, “The Syrian Arab Army, which is led by President Bashar Assad, is the only force on the ground, along with their allies, who are fighting ISIS — so you want to weaken the only system that is fighting ISIS?”

Washington-based reporters tell us that one potent force in Syria, al-Nusra, is made up of “rebels” or “moderates,” not that it is the local al-Qaeda franchise. Saudi Arabia is portrayed as aiding freedom fighters when in fact it is a prime sponsor of ISIS. Turkey has for years been running a “rat line” for foreign fighters wanting to join terror groups in Syria, but because the United States wants to stay on Turkey’s good side, we hear little about it. Nor are we often reminded that although we want to support the secular and battle-hardened Kurds, Turkey wants to kill them. Everything Russia and Iran do in Syria is described as negative and destabilizing, simply because it is they who are doing it — and because that is the official line in Washington.

By Robert Parry (an investigative reporter who first broke news of the infamous Iran-Contra scandal), Feb. 18, 2016, ConsortiumNews.com.

A source close to Russian President Vladimir Putin told me that the Russians have warned Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that Moscow is prepared to use tactical nuclear weapons if necessary to save their troops in the face of a Turkish-Saudi onslaught. Since Turkey is a member of NATO, any such conflict could quickly escalate into a full-scale nuclear confrontation.

Why would the US allow this? Just because the CIA backed Al Qaeda linked so-called moderate Islamic groups opposed to Syrian President Assad in a longstanding Syrian civil war and those groups are linked to Turkey and financed by the Saudis and so the US has to protect the Al Qaeda backed Syrian "rebels" who are just tools of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, countries with a commitment to authoritarian Sunni Muslim rule and whose ideology is not far removed from Al Qaeda to begin with? I dunno. It seems a little wacky to me. Maybe no one thinks the Russians are serious? Or maybe US is playing checkers and Russia is playing 3-D chess.

A report from the Argentine doctors’ organisation, Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, challenges the theory that the Zika virus epidemic in Brazil is the cause of the increase in the birth defect microcephaly among newborns.

The increase in this birth defect, in which the baby is born with an abnormally small head and often has brain damage, was quickly linked to the Zika virus by the Brazilian Ministry of Health. However, according to the Physicians in the Crop-Sprayed Towns, the Ministry failed to recognise that in the area where most sick people live, a chemical larvicide that produces malformations in mosquitoes was introduced into the drinking water supply in 2014. This poison, Pyriproxyfen, is used in a State-controlled programme aimed at eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The Physicians commented: “Malformations detected in thousands of children from pregnant women living in areas where the Brazilian state added Pyriproxyfen to drinking water are not a coincidence, even though the Ministry of Health places a direct blame on the Zika virus for this damage.”

They also noted that Zika has traditionally been held to be a relatively benign disease that has never before been associated with birth defects, even in areas where it infects 75% of the population.

A long and astute analysis of how the Federal Reserve's policies have created the neo-liberal economic regime of austerity for the masses and accelerating profits for the .01% under Democratic and Republican administrations.

The key takeaway is that of course markets have finally lost faith in the Fed because no matter what the Fed does now it will destabilize global markets. Markets have believed the Fed will insure constant asset inflation. NOT SO!

If it raises interest rates, this will cause the stock and bond markets to go down. That would reverse the debt leveraging that has kept these markets up. Higher interest rates also would bankrupt Third World debtors, which will not be able to pay their dollar debts if dollars become more expensive in their currencies.

But if the Fed keeps interest rates low, pension funds and insurance companies will have difficulty making the paper gains that their plans imagined could continue exponentially ad infinitum. So whatever it does, it will destabilize the global economy.

OMG! Now the Republicans are running attack ads against Bernie because the latest polls show Bernie beats all Republicans and Hillary LOSES to ALL Republicans. She does not have her husband's gravitas, warmth, rhetorical skills or political instincts. She would be great on the Supreme Court, but she has never won a political election against a strong opponent in her life. Just sayin'!

Climate scientists have long warned that insect infestations will be greater on a warmer planet. This attack is how that prophecy begins. Half the forests in British Columbia have fallen victim - 44 million acres in total if we include Alberta. This is an area 20 times bigger than Yellowstone National Park, bigger than New England, New York and New Jersey combined. There were so many beetles at the peak in the mid- to late 2000s that strong winds transported them 100 miles over the spine of the Rockies. It was said, "they fell like rain."

"A week ago, eight of the major markets we track were not in a bear market. This week, only seven are left. Three of them are within less than one percentage point of qualifying for a bear market. For the moment, the S&P 500 is the cleanest dirty shirt (-11.7%), followed by the Dow (-13.0%), the Korean KOSPI (-15.6%), and the Nasdaq (-17.1%). To find the Nikkei, which a week ago wasn’t even in a bear market, you have to dive much deeper. . ."

We continue to classify the prospective equity market return/risk profile within the most negative climate we identify. The basis of this classification is fairly straightforward. Historically, once an extended speculative period of extreme overvalued, overbought, overbullish conditions gives way to increasing risk-aversion, as indicated by deterioration in market internals (and particularly in the presence of hostile yield trends in the form of widening credit spreads), the stock market has become vulnerable to vertical losses. Though not every instance of this syndrome has been followed by a market collapse, every notable panic and market crash across more than a century of data has featured that basic setup.

Prior to the mid-1990’s, the most common “reference” index of investors was the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Presently, the most broadly followed index is the S&P 500 Index. The following charts show the general pattern I’ve described, along with the 1929 and 1987 instances.

With Emerging Markets now nearly half of the world economy and most of the DM economy beyond U.S. borders heavily dependent on EM foreign demand and EM financial stability, the United States faces a global recession that it will be UNABLE TO WITHSTAND. U.S. export exposure recently hit a record share of GDP, problems in global credit markets will adversely affect U.S. banks and markets, the American stock market has vast foreign exposure, and household spending/saving rates are unusually vulnerable to prices of financial assets. Plus, there is no room to cut interest rates, a tonic applied for economic and financial weakness consistently for many decades.

The incredible boom we have seen in corporate credit in recent years is actually very similar to the boom in the mortgage market which led to the financial crisis.

As Jeff Snider noted yesterday, just the past few years issuance of lower-rated corporate debt dwarfs the size of the entire subprime mortgage market in 2007. And to dismiss the systemic risk once again? Shame on you.

While many in the world are completely dependent on large scale agriculture, the Russian people feed themselves. Their agricultural economy is small scale, predominantly organic and in the capable hands of the nation's people. Russians have something built into their DNA that creates the desire to grow their own food. It's a habit that has fed the Russian nation for centuries. It's not just a hobby but a massive contribution to Russia's agriculture.

Food sovereignty puts the people who produce, distribute and eat food at the centre of decisions about food production and policy rather than corporations and market institutions that have come to dominate the global food system. In Havana, Cuba 90% of the city's fresh produce comes from local urban farms and gardens.

In 2003, the Russian government signed the Private Garden Plot Act into law, entitling citizens to private plots of land for free. These plots range from 0.89 hectares to 2.75 hectares. [Ed. Note: 1 hectare = 2.47 acres.] Industrial agricultural practices tend to be extremely resource intensive and can damage the environment. 70% of global water use goes to farming, and soil is eroded 10 to 40 times faster.

In Rotterdam this week, the designer Daan Roosegaarde is showing off the result of three years of research and development: The largest air purifier ever built. It’s a tower that scrubs the pollution from more than 30,000 cubic meters of air per hour—and then condenses those fine particles of smog into tiny “gem stones” that can be embedded in rings, cufflinks, and more.

Meditation Moment for the Pisces Solar Festival, Virgo Full Moon 2016

"Water is a materialization of the cosmic fluid that fills the whole of space. By means of thought it is possible to be in contact with this fluid and be purified by it, for if water cleanses us on a physical level, on the mental plane, it can do just the same. The first step is to be aware, when washing, that through the physical water running over you, you are able to contact a spiritual element.

Each day when you wash, therefore, try to use measured, harmonious gestures so that your thoughts may be free to do their work. Concentrate on the water, on its pure, limpid transparency, and you will then feel that it is reaching into unknown regions within you and working its transformations. Not only will you feel lighter and purer, but your heart and mind will be nourished by new, subtler and more invigorating elements." – Omraam Mikhail Aivanhov

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Computer programmer Ace Hoffman’s blog on the hazards of nuclear power receives tens of millions of hits yearly. Ace’s book THE CODE KILLERS is an expose of the nuclear power industry. Free download, too!

Betsy Cashen studied nutrition at Cornell University and has been a practicing dietitian since 1986. She was co-manager of a biodynamic farm for several years. She lives in Claverack, NY. If you want to send her a message, use the Satya Center contact us form.

Curtis is the co-owner and Editor of Satya Center. Curtis has been a publisher, editor and investigative journalist for 30 years, at WORTH magazine, Ameritrade, The Village Voice, The Nation, Mother Jones and many other publications. Curtis is a certified past-life regression therapist and a Reiki Master.

Dennis Klocek is Director of the Consciousness Studies Program at Rudolf Steiner College in Sacramento, CA. Dennis is author of Seeking Spirit Vision, Drawing from the Book of Nature, Weather and Cosmos, and A Bio-Dynamic Book of Moons.

Dr. Marina Angeli is a psychiatrist in private practice in Athens, Greece. She is a graduate of the Flower Essence Society Practitioner Training and Certification Program. For more information, write to Dr. Angeli.

Jane Sherry is co-owner and Artistic Director of Satya Center. Jane is a fine artist with work in the Getty Museum, the New York Public Library, major Ivy League universities, and many private collections. Jane is also a poet, a biodynamic gardener, a Reiki Master, and a certified past life regression therapist.

Jed A. Myers is a Seattle poet and musician whose writing has been published in various journals. His loose network of collaborators, ArtsforHearts, puts on benefits in local spaces for a wide range of real life causes.

Julia Brayshaw lives in Olympia, Washington where she maintains a private pratice in psychotherapy. She is a Flower Essence Society certified practitioner. Julia can be reached by contacting the Flower Essence Society.

Linde Farmer R.N. is a Wellness nurse who has written for LILIPOH Magazine. LILIPOH is a quarterly magazine exploring Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical approach to nutrition, health, farming, education, spirituality and the environment.

Marcel Vogel one of America’s most prominent late Twentieth Century spiritual scientists. Marcel Vogel worked for IBM for many years, and is credited with creating the famous “Vogel healing wands” made of quartz crystal which are so popular around the world today. Visit our Vogel archive, with many of Marcel’s writings.

Mirabai Starr is the author of highly acclaimed new translations of the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross. She teaches philosophy and world religions at the University of New Mexico.

Peter Dale Scott, a former Canadian diplomat and English Professor at the UC Berkeley, is a poet, writer, and researcher. His books include The War Conspiracy, The Iran-Contra Connection, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the CIA in Central America, and Drugs Oil and War.

Phillip Lindsay has been a student and teacher of the Ageless Wisdom and Esoteric Astrology for over 25 years, and is the author of several books on the subject. See Philip’s website, The Esoteric Astrologer.

Rene received an M.D. from the University of Havana. He has coordinated many research and development projects in Homeopathy, including the Homeopathy Hospital Project. Rene has also taught workshops on Homeopathy in Cuba and Guatemala.

Ross Rentea, M.D. has been in Chicago since 1983, practicing as an anthroposophical doctor together with Andrea, his wife, at their clinic, the Paulina Medical Clinic. Visit their new website, TrueBotanica.com.

Rupert Sheldrake is a biologist and author. His most recent book is The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind. His book Seven Experiments that Could Change the World was voted Book of the Year by the British Institute for Social Inventions.

Starhawk, a San Francisco writer, is committed to the marriage of spiritual work and political activism. She is the author of The Spiral Dance, The Pagan Book of Living and Dying, and other works of nonfiction and fiction.

While Trish Mooney worked as a dance and movement instructor she discovered she could see auras and energy. She became a Flower Essence Society Certified Practitioner after attending the 1999 FES Practitioner Training Program. Contact Trish.

Walter Wink was Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City. Among his various books are The Human Being, Peace Is The Way, and The Bible in Human Transformation. Visit Walter's page at Amazon.com.